Fire Emblem Echoes devs on going forward with the remake, considered adding newer elements from the series

In a new interview with Polygon, Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia director Kenta Nakanishi spoke about the newly released remake.

Nakanishi told the site that Intelligent Systems wanted “to integrate things that we couldn’t do with Fire Emblem Fates on the 3DS platform.” That caused the team to look back on the past. Fire Emblem Gaiden was a game that resonated with Intelligent Systems and Nakanishi in particular since his father – who died when he was a child – had passed the game on to him.

Nakanishi recognizes that Fire Emblem Gaiden lacked a memorable plot and characters since “a lot of the story element was explained in the manual.” This was something Intelligent Systems was about to address on 3DS.

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is quite a different game compared to other recent Fire Emblem titles. It has 3D dungeons, but characters can’t be paired together to have children, and other elements aren’t here as well. “We did consider adding things like My Unit and the Avatar [personalization options from the previous 3DS Fire Emblem games], but we really wanted to focus on Alm and Celica,” Nakanishi noted to Polygon.

I’m actually very happy that we don’t have avatars in this. THis allwoed Alma nd Celica to be fleshed out characters and have personality. I… personally don’t like avatars and pairings. I’d rather see good canon pairings or a limited pool of very well-written supports. Honestly, Valentia’s narrative so far has kept me caring about the characters, and I hadn’t felt that way since the great characters of the Tellius series. I honestly couldn’t care less about most characters in Awakening and Fates.

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TheJuiciest

I’m liking it so far. Honestly I’m not that much of a the MU feature and hope the Switch game doesn’t use it.

Vigilante_blade

Yeah, to me, the My Unit feature sort of forces the writing into making main characters bland, since they don’t want the unit representing the player to be doing morally gray things. From a design perspective, an avatar puts you in a bit of a bind. Every person is different and people might disagree with how the unit that is supposed to represent them acts. For exmaple, I’m much more of a fan of Soren’s as a tactician than Robin. Bonds and all are nice, but logic is the true hero of any war. Personal emotion has no business being part of war strategy. He makes more sense as a character. He is flawed, but that’s what makes him interesting.

I could say the opposite thing about Corrin. The writters try to make him as perfect as possible since he is supposed to represent the player, but in the end, I ended up finding him to be a complete idiot that I didn’t want to be asociated with. I groaned whenever they used my name to talk about Corrin, and regretted giving my name to him. I would much rather have seen Corrin be his own character and see him have to do dark things. The premise of Fates could have been good, but sadly, characters were cartoonishly good or evil. There wa sno thinking involved.

ForeVision

Since the Switch version will be able to make use of more power and space, they could possibly put in options to choose from, as in what the character will say. This would alleviate your issues with the MU, or avatar as I’d like to call him. I very much enjoyed having avatars in those games, even if they rarely conveyed my actual thoughts (again, choices as to what to say would alleviate this).

Vigilante_blade

It would help, but I,d rather not have it. I’m much more fond of lords like Ike, Roy, Eliwood, Hector, etc… who have some amount of depth to them. I don’t want Fire Emblem to be my story. I want it to follow the stories of characters I love, like how I really love the chemistry between Alm and Celica.

ForeVision

So, by that I can assume you think avatars don’t have depth to them? The idea of following the stories of pre-set characters is a personal preference though, and I’m sure there are plenty of people who enjoy the idea of having an avatar. The best would be to choose between a pre-defined one, or your own character, but I doubt we’ll see that.

Even if Corrin’s responses felt rather meek to me, with little force behind them, that’s something writers can fix. There’s plenty of games where your avatar’s lines were pre-written, yet they come off as a strong character that has their share of emotion-filled remarks (snide/irritated/sarcastic etc) that’s something where VA can do an excellent job.

When push comes to shove, we’ve the older titles of FE following what you describe (pre-set characters) and the newer titles of FE following what I’m talking about (avatars) so the question comes down to: Which one will FE be using going into the future? Which one will be used for the Switch game?

Vigilante_blade

It is infortunate because Echoes is very engaging. If you ever get a chance, do try it out. I am not saying Echoes is perfect, but it is refreshing. I have found myself smiling while playing it and listening to the dialogue.

As for depth and avatars, I can see ways to provide them with some depth, but often, I make the comparison between the original Xenoblade and X. I cared about Shulk in Xenoblade. He was a very relatable protagonist. In X, your avatar felt like an empty shell. Now if I compare Valentia and other games with avatars in the series, Alm and Celica are interesting characters due to their pre-established history. On the other hand, in Awakening and Fates, they are Mary Sue characters. As for Kris in Heroes of Light and Shadows, that applies as well, but he only really serves to makes Marth look good. His existence is inconsequential. The best way I have seen it done was in The Blazing Sword. You don’t say anything. You’re a tactician and have zero bearing on the story. Even then, you could cut Mark out altogether.

I want to see the kind of incredible chemistry your would between the members of the Greil mercenaries. Soren and Titania bickering over different ideals but having begrudging respect to one another, the three brothers being competitive towards one another but very protective when it counts, Soren rubbing people the wrong way but Ike and Titania understanding his empathetic side. Those are great interactions that make me care. It feels like a tight-knit group.

I respect your opinion, but as open as I used to be towards avatars when Awakening first released, I have grown to want them gone in favour of real characters. Heck, I even like the limited amount of supports in Valentia. Yeah, there are few, but at least they are mostly good.

ForeVision

I’ve chances aplenty, but chances alone are not enough, if one does not care. Echoes does not seem like my cup of tea, specifically with the “ground based” combat and as “meh” as Alm has struck me in what I’ve heard of him. I’d rather steer clear then be dissapointed.

So what I gather from you, is that silent protagonists don’t add much to the story? So basically Link could as easily be cut out and replaced by random dude 88 in that regard?

It’s purely a clash of what one wants from their game, as I enjoy having a connection to who I’m playing, and I’ve seen good avatars and bad pre-written characters. It depends on what you want from your RPG, and the problem with FE,as I’ve said above, is that they’ve used both but have not defined themselves by either (will continue in a bit, got someone ringing my doorbell)

Vigilante_blade

Depends on the game. Fire Emblem is a character story with political intrigue. A silent protagonist would simply not work. Zelda is a game about exploration and a much more personal journey. That is why it works there.

I find the lack of the weapon triangle to be an issue, but I till enjoy the game quite a bit more than Fates and Awakening. By that, I mean at least thrice as much. I actually think Alm is a good protagonist. I also feel far more connected to Alm than I ever was to Corrin because Alm feels like a human being with some degree of intellect.

Fore

I didn’t feel as connected to Corrin either, but that was different with Robin. But I’ve also enjoyed Awakening more than I did Fates.

Vigilante_blade

I could see how it could ve the case. I think that if you only look at Conquest, it is a bettet game gameplay-wise, but while Awakening’s story is bad, it is not as offensively bad.

Fore

I didn’t mind Awakening’s story, and had a good laugh at Frederic and Chrom’s interactions, the ones with Vaike and just a good cast overall imho. A lot more character to them (save for those like Tiki whose only word they truly taught here was “Marth”).

Vigilante_blade

Vaike is one of my most hated Fire Emblem characters of all time personaly. I benched him immediately.

I never really took Awakening seriously, which to me is the death of the narrative.

Fore

I found Vaike to be rather hilarious, but then again, I enjoy dry and silly characters like that.